In your opinion how does the kampfer stack up against the competition if it was still active in the zeta/post zeta era up to CCA and gundam unicorn? also what is your opinion on the zeon ms design it looks like the base to future neo zeon suits like the dogas basically any zeon in that particular time line it seems like this suit was ahead of its time.

Basically, the Kämpfer is the MIG-25 of mobile suits; it's really, really fast, but it would fare very poorly in a prolonged battle against the likes of say, a Dom Tropen or a Gelgoog Jäger. Any Gryps War or later mobile suits, which have both performance that is at least equal to it and generally far better armament, would utterly slaughter it.

"You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but take a boat in the air you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down. Tells you she's hurting before she keens. Makes her a home."

The Kampfer was like all late war zeon prototypes it was heavily optimized for doing exactly what we see it do hi-speed hit and run attacks. it has a lack of close combat equipment and was destroyed by the alex when it used up its armaments and got shredded by close range vulcan fire. it would have never actually been able to get mass produced due to the fact it's attack pattern could be done with a dom unit with better armor.

It does armed with beam sabers, but I'd say that, like the Gundam Physalis, they're more of a "just in case" weapon and, as a hit-and-run MS and probably similar to the Dom series, more for charging and fly-by-slashing enemy MS and not actually outright engaging them in melee combat like duels or anything.

As said, MS by the Zeta-era could easily match or outperform the Kampfer in its own area as well as others AND do a much better job of it, much less ZZ and beyond. And 0080 was just one-on-one. Imagine if it were involved in a full-scale battle with multiple MS and crossfire all around. Just a lucky pelting from a machine gun would probably take it (or at least the pilot or some necessary system) out, but by Zeta, it was almost all beam weapons, which would be far worse for it too.

In the end, it wasn't really "ahead of its time" in any way at all. It was rather just a simple concept; less armor and more rockets/verniers for more speed. It's hardly anything new or unique, and the Kampfer ended up taking that concept TOO drastically.

"I'll show you that a superior mobile suit has its limits when it goes up against a superior pilot!" - Char Aznable, The Red Comet

One thing that isn't pointed out is how it can be easily assembled covertly by just a handful of people. I think that counts for something for a suit specialized in sabotage. A well inserted Kampfer could probably still do quite a bit of damage in the Zeta era where the bulk of the Fed's MSs are just GM IIs.

That may of been the reason it was selected to be used for that mission it had the speed of the rick dom but was much less bulky than it's counterparts. The issue is that most zeta era ms could perform at that speed and had heavy armor.

looking at the wiki page it seems that The GP04 / AGX-04 project was an attempt to build an more modern version of the MS-18E. The config we see in 0080 is the E type meant go in and hit it's target and get out of combat. the YMS-18 seems to still see use due to the fact that you could easily take one apart and ship it in to be assembled and do it's attack run. Basically this was Zeon's black ops MS unit. It seems that later designers opt out of doing MS to be assembled in the field of an single mission and just build units that use the same attack pattern built on normal frames like the GM light Armor.http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/MS-18E_K%C3%A4mpferhttp://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/YMS-18_K%C ... _Prototype

flamingtroll wrote:One thing that isn't pointed out is how it can be easily assembled covertly by just a handful of people. I think that counts for something for a suit specialized in sabotage.

That's not as unique as you think. Axis/Neo Zeon MS were known for their ability to be broken into kits for storage (Mainly on their on Endras, to give them extra suits to use as replacements/when needed), and then could be reassembled in a matter of hours.

JEFFPIATT wrote:looking at the wiki page it seems that The GP04 / AGX-04 project was an attempt to build an more modern version of the MS-18E. The config we see in 0080 is the E type meant go in and hit it's target and get out of combat. the YMS-18 seems to still see use due to the fact that you could easily take one apart and ship it in to be assembled and do it's attack run. Basically this was Zeon's black ops MS unit. It seems that later designers opt out of doing MS to be assembled in the field of an single mission and just build units that use the same attack pattern built on normal frames like the GM light Armor.http://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/MS-18E_K%C3%A4mpferhttp://gundam.wikia.com/wiki/YMS-18_K%C ... _Prototype

Don't ever trust anything the Gundam wiki has to say, especially if that is the first place you're finding the information. The Gundam wiki is an absolutely awful cesspool of conjecture and flat-out lies passed off as obscure trivia.

Imperial wrote:Don't ever trust anything the Gundam wiki has to say, especially if that is the first place you're finding the information. The Gundam wiki is an absolutely awful cesspool of conjecture and flat-out lies passed off as obscure trivia.

When they aren't stealing text word-for-word from this very site, that is...

mcred23 wrote:
That's not as unique as you think. Axis/Neo Zeon MS were known for their ability to be broken into kits for storage (Mainly on their on Endras, to give them extra suits to use as replacements/when needed), and then could be reassembled in a matter of hours.

That's probably attributed to the advance in movable frame design. Kampfer's modularity seems to be unique enough pre-movable frame that they featured it in Ecole Du Ciel.

JEFFPIATT wrote: The issue is that most zeta era ms could perform at that speed and had heavy armor.

Not particularly for GM II and Hi-Zacks that are the bulk of the Fed forces. They are all titanium/ceramic alloys. I would argue that Kampfer performs better than both of them in speed and mauverability, and only would only be outmatched by Marasai/GM III and up mass produced MS.

HalfDemonInuyasha wrote:And given how the Titans were by the Zeta-era, I doubt you'd be able to so easily, covertly, get a Kampfer so near your target area and assemble it like that.

That maybe true. But smuggling and resupplying the Zeon cells would still be easier with a modular MS Kampfer, compared to Zakus and Doms. Raiding operation can be speeded up too. If they produced enough MS-18 I think they would have been a good staple MS for the earthbound Zeon

Personally I think that the Kampfer, along with other high performing Zeon MS developed late in the OYW, could actually hold their ground against some of the EF's mass produced MS that appeared during the remainder of the first universal century. For comparison purposes, I'm mainly considering the MS-14B, which is largely a MS-14A with a booster backpack.

I have several main reasons to believe this, but the most important one is definitely the rather marginal increase of MS perfomance that was seen between the RGM-79C and later on with the RGM-79R.

Afterwards, the next important mass produced MS was the Hizack which still doesn't have a significant improve in performance, but rather on ease of production and maintenance. Also, the inability to use two beam weapons at a time is another significant drawback. Until this point, high spec OYW Zeon designs still have comparable performance to the newer designs (excluding limited mass production units such as the Marasai and Nemo).

It's not until the introduction of the RGM-86R and RGM-89D that the Federation's mainstay mass produced MS finally takes a major jump in the right direction. I find the RGM-86R as a particularly good MS design, however as discussed in some other threads, it seems that it's production run was the lowest among the main mass produced GM types (RGM-79, RGM-79C, RGM-79R). Overall, the Jegan seems to take a small step backwards performance-wise when compared with the GM III, but remains a rather good design (the GM III has lower generator output, but higher propulsion/weight ratio. The Jegan's propulsion/weight ratio is marginally lower than the one of a MS-14B produced during the OYW). Either way, both units most important improvement seems to be the addition of extra firepower in the form of missiles that supplement their standard beam rifles.

Obviuosly there are also some areas where the newer designs have definite advantages, such as radar range and new style cockpits, since those are constantly improving. There are others that doesn't seem to be so clear, such as armor materials, especially considering that most unit can be destroyed with a single well palced beam shot, regardless of construction (unless the have some special defensive feature which is unlikely to be available to a mass produced design).

Finally in the Kampfer's case, if used for guerilla tactics which Zeon remnants supposedly carried out, it would probably have performed remarkably well against generic mass produced MS up until the Hizack.

If the sense of the original question was actually about Zeon mass producing and deploying Kampfers after the OYW, I would say that it's unlikely for that to be the case (even if conditions that allowed the situation to happen were there, such as Side 3 being independant). Zeon's mass produced MS would undoubtly would have been the Gelgoog and its variants until a suitable replacement was designed. The Kampfer could have still been produced in limited quanitites, but certainly not as a mainstay MS. Besides, IIRC, unlike the Dom and Rick Dom, the cost for producing a Gelgoog was not much higher than that of a Zaku (I'm pretty sure I read this somewhere, probably on Mark's site. I'll add the link later once I found the fragment). On the other hand I would expect the cost of an specialized MS like the Kampfer to be much higher.

flamingtroll wrote:That's probably attributed to the advance in movable frame design. Kampfer's modularity seems to be unique enough pre-movable frame that they featured it in Ecole Du Ciel.

Maybe, but that's not the only reason, since a lot of their suits don't have moveable frames. The Gaza-C doesn't have a moveable frame, it uses a system of sliding blocks that makes it easy to produce (Which may able be why it's such a poor transforming MS ), and presumably, the Gaza-D and Ga-Zowmnn would have a similar system since they're based on that. Although, the first Axis suit mentioned having a moveable frame, the Galluss-J, is also, AFAIK, the only suit we know how long it takes to assemble from it's kit, at six hours (Presumably under normal circumstances with some standard number of people working on it, in something like the Kampfer's case I'd imagine it would take longer).

flamingtroll wrote:Not particularly for GM II and Hi-Zacks that are the bulk of the Fed forces. They are all titanium/ceramic alloys. I would argue that Kampfer performs better than both of them in speed and mauverability, and only would only be outmatched by Marasai/GM III and up mass produced MS.

Eh, there is no way to really know one way or the other. Between the fights we see them in and the general differences between shows, namely animation quality, I don't think you can reasonably say how it would perform against the Hizack or Nemo (Or any other mobile suit from that era), and we won't go further into that debate cause it's already too close to a versus discussion...

flamingtroll wrote:If they produced enough MS-18 I think they would have been a good staple MS for the earthbound Zeon

And they would have won the war if they mass produced the Big Zam.

Gelgoog Jager wrote:Overall, the Jegan seems to take a small step backwards performance-wise when compared with the GM III, but remains a rather good design (the GM III has lower generator output, but higher propulsion/weight ratio. The Jegan's propulsion/weight ratio is marginally lower than the one of a MS-14B produced during the OYW).

Which is yet another example of why to take all the printed stats with a grain of salt, particularly when discussing MS from different shows.

In terms of the cost issue and all, it would most likely be due to the Gelgoog being like a "Gundam-ized" Zaku and probably using a number of similar parts (primarily due to both being developed by Zeonic Company too), which would allow much greater ease of production lines and parts. This would be another advantage something like the Acguy and, of course, other Zaku variants, would have for Zeon; able to use many parts widely available from the Zaku II.

Unfortunately, the late introduction prevented a lot of excess parts from being made, hence why the (more high-end) Gelgoog(s) had to either be toned down after the OYW or had different unique self-modifications made to it (Gelgoog Stutzer and ReGelg) when used by Zeon Remnants. ZZ being one of the only times we see a regular one being used without any big changes either way.

"I'll show you that a superior mobile suit has its limits when it goes up against a superior pilot!" - Char Aznable, The Red Comet

The bulk of the MS we see in 0080 are Technical experiments for future MS development. The Kampfer seems to have been an experiment in modular MS design that the federation would perfect with the movable frame. The MS-18 defiantly left an impression of the EFSF since one E type unit built on site destroyed the entire MS complement of a Pegasus class ship composed of the top of the line in EFSF MS Tech. I don't know if it is officially related to the to any of the Zeta era MS but parts of it show up in Units of that era.

Well, as mentioned, that seemed to be primarily a way just to make the Kampfer look cool given its uniqueness in 0080 like the Alex. The MS deployed from the Gray Phantom seemed to do nothing but free-fall and not actually move around at all in any sort of formation and such, leaving them as easy targets for the Kampfer to pick off with 1 shot each x_x;

If it were an actual battle between them, I'd say the outcome would've been a bit different.

"I'll show you that a superior mobile suit has its limits when it goes up against a superior pilot!" - Char Aznable, The Red Comet